Successful 33 year-old professional golfers don’t think about dying often, but the reality of death faced Paul Azinger in 1993 when he was diagnosed with cancer. After a biopsy on Azinger’s shoulder, his doctor reluctantly reported to the defending PGA champion that he had lymphoma. Additional time would tell how severe the cancer was. The answer didn’t come to the champion for three days.
“I did a lot of thinking about a lot of things those three days,” Azinger said. “It was the first time in my life that I really understood that I wasn’t bulletproof. When you’re thirty-three and you feel like you’re at the peak of your career and you’ve got a great family and more money than you ever dreamed of making, you don’t think about dying. I still think of myself as a kid, just a big kid. Now someone was telling me that I might die. There’s no clever answer when someone tells you that.”
Azinger beat lymphoma and became a regular on the tour again. In fact, he was selected to be the Ryder Cup Captain for the 2008 U.S. Team.
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